If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Thought i would share the fruits of my labour with some of you, been working on this on and off for a couple of months. Its the first lid i have painted up mostly with Humbroll paints as im in the UK in a kind of Prepo2 style. Looking to weather it a bit more and looking for a few pointers being new to this, i see a lot of people painting some gray round the silver, how would i go about this as i have layered the paint job so far. Comments and suggestions appreciated. The ear pieces are not finished either and are just held on with some blue tack.

i did notice that many helmets had that washed out colour on the mandibles. I take it you would water down the red paint and apply??? Im getting a bit lost here as i have reached a point that i'm not feeling as comfortable painting and i'm not looking forward to the kill stripes!!!! I would hate to make a mistake now!!!!

Also weathering the helmet in terms of dulling it down what is the best option i hear people using steel wool and or washing the helmet in window cleaner, again i,
'm a bit lost here and any direction will be greatly appreciated.

Again cheers for the advice guys much appreciated.

Predatormv said:

It looks very good. As for the grey around some of the scratches I did mine topicaly with a very fine brush after the fact. Also don't forget you missed the pink color on the mandibles....not kidding.

I am currently comtemplating gettin a air brush kit to give this a go myself
kudos on goign layered. advice I got so far has been a combination of layered - for the big areas of scrapes and topical for the small grey/pink on mandibles.

looks good.

yeah I heard abt the window cleaner idea as well, but no tried it myself

The window cleaner is a mix of window cleaner and black acrylic paint (two or three drops of paint, just enough to make the liquid a bit cloudy) and wash over the helmet, then gently blot it off with a paper towl. Repeat as you see fit. DO NOT use steel wool on your helmet, it will ruin your paint job. You can take a fine scotch brite pad and rub it down a bit to dull out the colors and help blend them. I also coat everything with Testor's dull coat (do not add a clear coat to it as it will change the colors drasticly..learned this the hard way)

The pink color on the mandibles is Piping Pink from Floquil, I have been told this was the actual color used on the real one. Good luck finding it though. I had to use Model Masters paint for this one color and it didn't look quite right so I added a bit of grey to it to make it look right. I did my pink as it's own layer, but it is clearly too late for you do to that, so just take a pencil and outline where you want it to go, and then paint it on with a fine brush, then erase the pencil with a normal eraser.

If anyone has any other questions or need advice on painting a Pre-pro2 helmet let me know as I have done it several times and have put hours and hours of time into research for it.

Really nice paint job so far, i tried the window/acrylic wash, didn't work for me. I weather the helmet with a mid grey, brown and black airbrushed VERY sparingly to add tone and deepen colours where needed. When fully dry you can go back over with 0000 wire wool and gently buff back the effect. Also varying the spray from fine to coarse gives the right effect...

You can also mist down the colour with a part water part acrylic paint mix without the car window cleaner stuff using a fine misty spray bottle, using
grey and black mixtures. best done after the clear coat I have found to be the case.

Thanks for the comments guys, im honestly crapping myself with the next stage of painting. im thinking of the getting to grips with the kill stripes next, got the paint getting the time is a killer at the moment, love to have a few days to sit alone with my lid!!!

Wee update on the lid. Painted the kill stripes ove the last couple of days, what a pain they are to do. I made a template for this cutting out some paper then applied it to the helmet but due to the curvature they all ended up at awkward angles half way along. So drew on the helmet with pencil then taped it up masking and painting.

Im getting there slowly need to apply the grey and the pink now over the mandibles. Quite happy at the moment with the progress. Will be painting up another lid after this though!!!

You can dull the paints a bit by carefully sanding with either a fine grit sandpaper of 00 steel wool which can be found in hardware stores like Lowes and Home Depot. 00 steel wool in particular works very well and as long as you long as you don't use too much pressure it will do a really good job at dulling the paint job without leaving any marks. I probably wouldn't use it all over or apply the same amount of sanding everywhere, I'd vary the amount of sanding and not sand everywhere.

nice work. so glad to see another pre pro. I too never noticed the pink color on the mandibles untill after I was done painting. so I sanded the said areas very lightly and achieved a pink color. however I do not recomend this option as it will keep you up at night contimplating reconstruction. I am currently repainting my entire bucket with every intention on layering the pink. I hope everthing comes together for you.